Borealis
by theCarny
Summary: During a trek through a nighttime tundra, Gordon, Alyx, and Barney stop to admire a rare sight...as well as take the rare opportunity to discuss. Contains friendship, sillyness, and Talking!Gordon. Note: I wrote this all during my math class.


_Author's Note: Okay, sorry, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Aperture Science "Borealis"; I wrote this before I'd completed Episode 2 and didn't even know if its significance until people started replying! Total goof on my part, but the story is only named for the aurora borealis, not the...ship...thing. Sorry for the confusion!_

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Despite the blanket of snow that sheltered the land, it was an unusually warm night. The sky's blue still remained a scarce tinge in the dark, illuminated by an opalescent moon, hung as a crescent above the distant horizon. Nothing moved in the stillness; not a gust of wind against the sulking trees, nor the scurrying of any few fauna. The only indications of life were the tiny clouds rising from the black treeline. Those whose mouths from which they originated clung tightly to the bark of the trees, staring beadily into the open ridges ahead.

"It looks clear," Alyx said, just loud enough for her companions to hear, as she stood up. "If there were Combine, we would have seen or heard something by now." Shivering slightly, she rubbed her arms and strode out beyond the trees. "C'mon, you guys," she giggled. "You'll turn into snowmen if you stay there for much longer."

Feeling awfully like a tree himself, Gordon jolted his rigid limbs from where they'd been frozen for the past who-knows-how-long. He shook his head, loosening a few stray snowflakes, then glanced down at Barney, who seemed to be dozing with his forehead against the tree. Gordon poked him with his foot. Snorting himself awake, Barney groped for his gun, missed, and fell backwards. By the time he realized they weren't under attack, Gordon was already walking away.

"Don't worry," he called after him. "I was just making sure the inside of my eyelids were scratch-free. Heheh. Heh."

Sheepishly, he trod after the physicist.

"Wow, it sure goes on forever," Alyx commented, peering over the edge of the ridge and towards the rocky, tree-speckled tundra away and below.

"Just a cold death-trap if ya ask me," Barney grumbled. "I'd rather we just get to that checkpoint as soon as we can."

"Humph. Well just because you're no fun, doesn't mean we can't be. Right Gordon?"

The physicist stopped, shrugged, and continued walking.

"What? Hey!" Alyx tried regaining their attention, but gave up, blowing a strand of stray hair up from between her eyes before grumbling. "You two are so moody." In truth, her sudden, strange over-assertiveness was something the two men were becoming used to.

It had been nearly a day, if not more, since their trek first began, a painstaking many hours of constant, fearful hiding and sneaking. Of course, it seemed all for nought, as they hadn't seen another form of life for miles, other than the humble trees. Not many creatures had tolerance for the eternal winter.

They stepped alongside the trail for a good while, in silence, before anything happened.

It first seemed a kind of fuzz outside the corner of Gordon's eye, initially taken as condensation on his glasses, causing him to absentmindedly try to wipe it away for several minutes, before he finally realized it wasn't coming off. At that point it had grown more prominent, and feeling a sudden jolt and expecting a gunship or something of the sort, Gordon turned abruptly to face the source. It was not, however, a gunship hanging off the edge of the cliff, guns ready, but regardless, Gordon stopped short.

"What is it?" Alyx asked, her and Barney halting before turning to face the object of his interest.

The object which, in fact, was not an object at all.

Thousands of thin lights were dancing above, twirling in flashes of greens, blues and the occasional yellows. Shimmering like lace, their curtain was growing even then, scampering around the panorama, almost as if their were sentient, playing with their observers.

"Wow."

None of them had seen the Northern Lights before. The chance had never really arisen. Yet here they stood, all three, staring in awe at the chilled heavens above.

"Ain't that a sight," Barney mused.

Gordon said nothing, as per the usual, but there was a glint in those green eyes of his that nearly mirrored the lights themselves.

The sky was a hypnotist, the lights, his pendulum, and his spell was to take that moment--one that should have been of the endless train of flee and fear--and transform it into a glimmer of magic in a grey reality.

They had never seen something more beautiful.

"I've..." Barney said, though his voice was touched with a crack. "Ahem. I've gotta go bleed the lizard."

Alyx and Gordon hardly acknowledged him as he trotted off towards the trees. The remainder stood together, mesmerized, taking an opportunity to sit down on a relatively dry boulder.

"I wonder what causes them," Alyx breathed, dreamily.

"Solar winds slamming against the Earth's magnetic sphere, spraying a wave of deadly, supercharged radiation particles over--"

"...Thaaaat was rhetorical, Gordon."

"...oh."

"Mmmyeah."

"...sorry."

Alyx giggled. Gordon noticed she'd been doing that a lot lately. It worried him.

"To think--something so dangerous, disguised as something so beautiful..." she trailed off for a moment, before whimsically adding, "Kinda like you, huh Gordon?"

He stared at her, brow slightly furrowed and eyes wide. She gave him an eyebrow. A moment later she realized, fully, what she had said.

"Oh. Oh God. Th-that's not what I meant!" she flushed, defensively waving her arms. "I swear Gordon, I--"

Gordon made some manner of low noise. Possibly laughter.

Wait..._Gordon_ was _laughing_?

Alyx, noticing this, stopped her blabbering and burst into laughter herself.

"Aaah, you know what I meant. You know, 'cause, you're a...heh...a nerd and all..." she wiped a tear from her eye, "...and you fight aliens and stuff."

Gordon, grinning slightly, shook his head.

"Ahh...aheh. Heh."

Alyx's laughter died down. Almost a relief to Gordon. She sounded like she was forcing herself to, at this point. She probably was.

"Gordon, what was it like?"

The physicist cast her a quizzical quirk of the eyebrow.

"I mean, the world. Before...what happened," she elaborated, watching Gordon earnestly. He stared straight forward, emotionlessly. Alyx waited a moment, but Gordon seemed unmoving. She looked away, dejectedly. Perhaps she had stirred up memories better left behind.

"It was bright."

Alyx glanced back up at the unexpected voice. Gordon was still staring into the distance, but there was something else on his face now, to...

"A lot more people, too," he said, though his voice remained low. "A lot more. And a lot more things to do. Like, sports, and...bingo clubs," Alyx gave him a look he didn't notice. "And...and movies, too."

She looked a little excited at the mention of that one.

"Dad told me about movies; he even had a few I could watch," she smiled at the memory, looking up at the Lights. "Dad tells me a lot of things about how it used to be." Something suddenly chased that spark of enthusiasm from her eyes. "Told me, anyways."

There it is.

Gordon cast her a subtle look, hardly moving but catching a glimpse of her expression all the same. He let the awkward silence linger until, glad he had such thick glasses to hide behind, he put a hand on her shoulder. Startled, she looked at him. He was staring (at this point, she doubted he ever actually blinked) at her now, wearing a stern expression. He must have realized he looked a little menacing, and forced a slightly encouraging half-smile.

She smiled back.

"Thanks, Gordon."

She couldn't tell if the cold or something else was making his face go pink, but regardless, he nodded, withdrew his hand and faced the sky again, where the lights were performing some kind of celestial triple-axis.

"There were also birds," he commented suddenly, catching Alyx off-guard again. "Not just the pigeons, though. Lots more. There were these white, elegant swans, and ducks...back where I used to live, we had this pond, and I could see it from my window. There were always people there--kids, old people--always. Late into the night."

"There was no curfew back then, right?"

Gordon nodded.

"The night was what you wanted it to be. Things...were. And we took them for granted."

His turn to trail off. Alyx saw him swallow hard. She rubbed her arm and looked away.

"Alyx."

"Yeah?"

"You can't forget."

She looked back at him, puzzled.

"Gordon?"

"Listen to me," he said. "No matter...no matter the things it makes you feel. We can't forget. Or else we also forget what we're fighting for."

For an instant she was taken aback, then she paused, letting his words sink in. Her eye watered a little.

"I'll never forget," she promised, bringing her knees up to her chest, hugging them.

Gordon shot her a smirk, half-nodding.

They sat for a couple moments, Alyx continuously on the verge of tears, playing with the fringe on her jacket and biting her lip, stretched into an awkward half-smile.

She wouldn't forget.

"One time, when I was still going to school," Gordon abruptly began. "I tried cooking."

"...oh?" Alyx asked, quite intrigued, as she wiped her eye on her sleeve.

"Yeah. Chicken cordon bleu," he recited the food as if the incident had only occurred the day before. Then he gave his glasses an unneeded press into his forehead. "I insisted I cook it in my own invention..."

Their voices continued, drifting through the crisp air, Gordon trying to keep her talking and Alyx musing over the fact that she'd never heard Gordon talk this much in his life.

Elsewhere, Barney had found a befitting tree, and was trying to listen to their ice-muffled conversation as he stood, keeping an ear out for juicy tidbits. He looked up through the treetops and caught sight of the dazzling night rainbows above and smirked, momentarily disregarding his companions' voices.

Who knew the world still had any beauty to offer?

Then something crunched in the woods in front of him.

"What kind of school did you go to?" Alyx asked, resting her cheek on her knees.

"Oh, it was great...except for the school uniforms, but--"

"Wait, school uniforms?"

"Well, uh--"

Suddenly a piercing yelp and a burst of gunfire shocked them from their conversation. They turned back to see Barney stumbling from the treeline, one hand on his pulse rifle and the other awkwardly trying to zip up his fly as he ran. Behind him scurried a good few headcrabs.

Gordon and Alyx glanced at each other before reaching for their respective weapons. Alyx cast him a smirk.

"We'll continue this another time."

Jolted so soon back to reality, the magician's moment over in a blink of an eye, Gordon nodded, and they dashed off to assist Barney, who was fending off the pesky critters between curses and complaints about their ability to exist anywhere.

Above, the aurora danced a ballet. Catching a glimpse of it from the corner of his vision, and despite the headcrabs being tossed around like beanbags by and in front of him, Gordon realized how easy they made it to believe in angels.


End file.
